Asser was a Welsh monk from St. David's, Dyfed, who became Bishop of
Sherborne in the 890s. In about 885 he was asked by Alfred the Great to
leave St. David's and join the circle of learned men which Alfred was
recruiting for his court. After spending a year at Caerwent due to an
illness, he accepted. In 893 Asser wrote a biography of Alfred, called
the Life of King Alfred. The manuscript survived to modern times in
only one copy, which was part of the Cotton library. That copy was
destroyed in a fire in 1731, but transcriptions that had been made
earlier, allied with material from Asser's work that was included by
other early writers, have enabled the work to be reconstructed. The
biography is now the main source of information about Alfred's life,
and provides far more information about Alfred than is known about any
other early English ruler. Asser also assisted Alfred in his
translation of Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care, and possibly with
other works. Asser is sometimes cited as a source for the legend of
Alfred having founded the University of Oxford, which is now known to
be false. A short passage making this claim was interpolated by William
Camden into his 1603 edition of Asser's Life. Doubts have also been
raised periodically about whether the entire Life is a forgery, written
by a slightly later writer, but it is now almost universally accepted
as genuine.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asser>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
366:
The Alamanni, an alliance of west Germanic tribes, crossed the frozen
Rhine in large numbers to invade the Roman Empire.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alamanni>
533:
Mercurius became Pope John II, the first pope to adopt a regnal name
upon elevation to the papacy.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_II>
1777:
American Revolutionary War: American forces under the command of George
Washington repulsed a British attack at the Battle of the Assunpink
Creek near Trenton, New Jersey.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Assunpink_Creek>
1833:
Two British naval vessels arrived at the Falkland Islands to re-assert
British sovereignty there.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-establishment_of_British_rule_on_the_Falklands_%281833%29>
1942:
In the largest espionage case in American history, over 30 members of a
German spy ring led by former South African Boer soldier and adventurer
Fritz Joubert Duquesne were convicted following an investigation by
the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duquesne_Spy_Ring>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
contumelious (adj):
Rudely contemptuous; showing contumely; insolent or disdainful
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/contumelious>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the
dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any
longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the
world as it will be ...
--Isaac Asimov
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov>
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